Now, less than two years later, everybody knows who Shiffrin is. She's just 17 years old, but she's making history and doing a little inspiring of her own.

On Dec. 12, in Aare, Sweden, Shiffrin, who grew up in both Vail and New Hampshire and is a senior at Burke Mountain Academy, a ski-oriented high school in East Burke, Vt., won her first World Cup race, a slalom, and became the second-youngest American skier in history to win a World Cup race.

Then, on Friday, in one of the tour's most prestigious (and richest) races -- a slalom in Zagreb, Croatia, with a first-place prize of $55,000 -- she won again, by a huge margin of 1.19 seconds, and became the first American skier in history to win two World Cup races before turning 18.

In a season in which Vonn has missed an extended part of the schedule because of lingering effects of an intestinal illness that landed her in the hospital in November, Shiffrin has taken over the U.S. spotlight. (Vonn, who hasn't raced since Dec. 16, is back in Europe and is expected to take a training run Thursday for Saturday's downhill in St. Anton, Austria.)

Shiffrin leads the slalom World Cup standings. She's sixth in the overall standings, ahead of seventh-place Vonn and eighth-place American Julia Mancuso. She is, well, recognized.

"When I started out, most everybody had no idea who I was," Shiffrin said this week in a phone interview from Europe with USA TODAY Sports. "And I was just in awe of everybody. I feel like I'm not as much in awe now. It's amazing to see how fast these girls are and I'm competing with them.

"Tina Maze (of Slovenia, the overall leader by a large margin) talks to me. She's really supportive and really cool . . . Actually, there's still a little bit of an awe factor with her."

Shiffrin, who had a third-place finish in a World Cup race last year, is not a complete surprise. She was expected to be a star someday. But making history at age 17, that's something maybe only she had in mind.

"Whenever I started thinking about goals in ski racing, I just always wanted to be the youngest," she says. "Actually, that's the way I approach life. I always want to be the youngest to do something. Playing soccer, I always wanted to play up an age group. In skiing, I wanted to beat the older girls."

U.S. ski team women's technical (slalom and giant slalom) coach Roland Pfeifer, Shiffrin's primary coach, says she has become dominant on steep sections of slalom courses.

"She keeps an upright stance and doesn't get back on her heels," Pfeifer says. "She has good balance, a calm upper body, and she can move her upper and lower body independently. So she can initiate a turn without rotating her upper body. I don't think the other girls are able to beat her on the steeps."

These American ski sensations don't just fall from the sky as often as soft powder on the back bowls of Vail Mountain. In this century, there have been only three American men who were consistent threats to win a World Cup race: four-event superstar Bode Miller (33 World Cup wins), current giant slalom star Ted Ligety (14 wins) and retired downhiller Daron Rahlves (12 wins). And there have been three women in that category: Vonn (57 career wins, second only to Austrian legend Annemarie Moser-Proell's 62) and, to a much lesser extent, Mancuso (seven wins) and retired slalom specialist Kristina Koznick (six).

Shiffrin will be among the favorites in slalom in her first World Championships â?? Feb. 4-17 in Schladming, Austria. And she's suddenly another possible U.S. medal contender in the next Winter Olympics, just 13 months away in Sochi, Russia. That's a big thought, but one for another day, she says.

"Either it hasn't hit me yet that I might be skiing at the Olympics or I'm just really good at not thinking about it," she says. "Right now, I'm just trying to ski really fast."